The Dreamhold
is interactive fiction — a classic text adventure. No graphics!
No point-and-click! You type your commands, and read what happens next.

The Dreamhold is designed for people
who have never played IF before. It introduces the common commands and
mindset of text adventures, one step at a time. There’s an extensive
help system describing standard IF commands, as well as dynamic hints
which pop up whenever you seem to be stuck.

I’ve tried to create a game which rewards many species of
adventurer: the inexperienced newcomer, the puzzle-hurdler, the casual
tourist, the meticulous explorer, the wild experimenter, the seeker
after nuances and implications.

The Dreamhold
is available now
for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.
For free!

Fluid interface designed for comfortable typing and reading.

Full-length puzzle adventure with several optional side quests and hidden endings.

Text adventure devotees can turn off the tutorials and hints, or play in Expert mode for additional challenge.

Achievements tracked through Game Center.

Pop-up palette of commonly used commands.

Dynamic in-game map, so you don’t have to scribble boxes on a piece of paper.

Full support for VoiceOver (speech output) and dictation (speech input) on devices that offer these features.

Yes, really free. Not “free with ads,” not
“freemium.” Just free. I want to introduce people to IF,
and this game is how I do it.

The Dreamhold was originally released as
a downloadable game file in 2004. You can still
play it on my web
site. (Although you won’t get the nifty in-game map,
or the achievements. Those are iOS exclusives.)

Release 1.0.1: Fixes the "Caught signal 11" bug.

Release 1.0.2: Bug fixes and UI improvements.

If the idea of interactive fiction is new or strange to you, take a look
at this quick reference card. It’s not a complete manual —
it’s just
a guide to what IF commands look like. Once you get used to the pattern,
it’s pretty easy to express what you want to do.

Install a Z-code interpreter. I recommend
Gargoyle,
which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Many
other alternatives
are available.

Start the interpreter and open dreamhold.z8.

The Dreamhold was built with
Inform 6,
a free text-adventure development language
created by Graham Nelson. (If you’re looking to create IF today,
you might be more interested by
Inform 7;
Graham has redesigned the language from the concept level up.
It’s not what you’re expecting.)

The iOS interpreter is
iOS Fizmo,
an open-source interactive fiction interpreter.
It combines
iOS Glk
(an IF display library by Andrew Plotkin)
and
Fizmo
(a general-purpose IF interpreter by Christoph Ender).
If this game turns out to be a hit, I intend to release iOS editions of
my other well-known works
(Shade, Spider and Web, and so on.)
And, of course, there will be the eventual release of
Hadean Lands.

Want to release your own IF games with
iOS Fizmo?
You have to be a registered iOS developer, and know your way around
Xcode, but it’s not too difficult. Check out the Git project and
take a look at the
procedure.
(Currently only Z-code games are supported. I will soon have
iOS Glulxe
ready, for Glulx games.)

The Dreamhold is
copyright 2003-4 by Andrew Plotkin.
The iOS Glk
display library is is copyright 2011-2012 by Andrew Plotkin.
The Fizmo
interpreter engine is copyright 2009-2012 by Christoph Ender.
All rights reserved.